


Confounding

by beetle



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M, Pre-Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for the slashthedrabble prompt "strip", but it ran a few hundred words too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confounding

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Set post-series, pre-movie. In fact, this completely discounts Serenity, because of a certain character death. Spoilers for S1, Ep1 and 2.

It's downright  _confounding_ , 's what it is.  All that  _pale_.  
  
  
Confounding that a man--even a Core-reared dandy--can be so pale. Even his gorramn  _hands_  are just . . .  _lily-white_. It's disturbing. Unnatural. That I can't even sit through the only meal I'm assured of, day to day on this le se rust-bucket, without seeing  _him_  sitting across from me. Or walking around with that eerie, crazy sister of his--and sometimes, I  _have_  to stare at him just so I'm not looking at her!  
  
  
Lights-out finds me waiting, still and quiet, in the deep shadows of the bulkheads near his bunk.  He wanders up not long after I get there, and for once, he's alone.  For once, I can watch him as long as I want.  
  
  
He stops outside his door, staring at nothing, and smiling kinda.  He does that a lot lately.  Probably thinking about all the gorramn sissified suits he owns.  All black, like he's trying to look like some kinda corpse-wrangler, though he's so rutting pale, he just looks like a corpse, his own self.  Or a Lunger.  
  
  
"River's going to be sleeping in her own bunk, tonight.  Come in," he says softly, but just loud enough I can hear.  He unlocks the door and steps in, leaving it open.  That's either an invite, or he's gone as whimsical as Little Miss Psycho Britches, talking to what ain't there.  
  
  
So I follow him into his bunk.  
  
  
He's already got the jacket laid on the back of a chair, and he's unbuttoning his fancy vest.  Them fine, pale fingers don't pop not a single tiny, gorramn button.  
  
  
His shirt's the color of parchment, not a wrinkle on it, not a stain.  
  
  
"You're like a gorramn woman," I reckon, shaking my head and closing his door behind me.  He looks me up and down like he's sizing up a patient.  
  
  
"And you're like . . . a ridiculous, sweaty man-ape," he says, all snotty and superior like always, but tired, too. “Can we forgo the usual battle of wits, tonight? You're clearly unarmed, and I have to be up in five hours.”  
  
  
“Yeah, yeah. I like you better when your mouth's too full for talking.” He rolls his eyes, and I reach out. Haul him to me by his fancy shirt, which I'm three seconds away from rippin' off him. He comes willingly, grabbing my wrists--it's still unsettling how strong his hands are. How strong  _all_  of him is. And he's built solid enough, despite his looks--sturdy, though he ain't tall. Though he don't do a lick of real work.  
  
  
"Easy on the shirt.  I happen to be fond of it," he says, trying to sound all persnickety and Core-ified, like we're sitting down to tea and dumplings, not like I'm about to strip him out of that get-up and have him on his knees . . . then have him on his knees some more.  
  
  
But his voice is shaking some, and he keeps licking his lips--the only color in his face besides his eyes. He's got that hungry look, like he gets every time we end up here. The one that once turned a sucker-punch in the med-bay into him getting bent over his own desk.  
  
  
"Anyone ever tell you you're too gorramn pale, Doc? Ain't right for a man to be this unmarked, either," I mutter, freeing my hands. It takes some doing, but I finally find my way through all them stupid, useless layers of his. He shrugs outta the shirt and vest, lets them fall to the floor. His chest is cream-white: no freckles, no scars . . . but enough hair to be interesting.  
  
  
The lower half ain't too bad, either. Or it ain't when I can actually  _see_  it. "Get outta them trousers.”  
  
  
His eyebrows drift up toward his hair. It's still combed back and neat, but not for much longer. "So my skin is somehow disagreeable to you, but your solution is . . . for me to take off more clothing.” He unbuckles his belt and draws it free of them loops all slow and sexy, eyes downcast, and a tiny smile on his face.  
  
  
Him and her got the same damn smile, dong ma? The same pale-pink lips in a too-solemn, bloodless face, and that same careful grimace of a smile.  
  
  
I shouldn't be thinking stupid fei hua like this--reaching out like this Touching his cheek, then his mouth. His face ain't nothing _special_ , feels like any other face. Smoother, though. Like he ain't never had to shave. And his lips are softer than a woman's.  
  
  
He looks me in the eye for the first time since I closed his door. His own eyes are some mixed-up, kuang zhe color between blue and green. Like pond-water, with scum floating on the top, only . . . less sickifying.  
  
  
A little less, anyway.  
  
  
My thumb's got a mind of its own, brushing his bottom lip. He closes his eyes and exhales. The tip of his tongue--pale-pink, what a gorramn shock!--darts out. Swipes his lips, and across my thumb, and  _ye-su_. . . .  
  
  
"Look, Doc," I say, ready to just tumble him back into his neat, nice-smelling bed without anymore yammering. But the same time I speak, he does, too, and says:  
  
  
“Kiss me.”  
  
  
And I know I heard wrong, since kissing ain't never been a single part of what we do together. “Beg pardon? Cuz it sounded like you said--”  
  
  
"Ai ya!” he bursts out, glaring at me with them pond-water eyes “Stop wasting precious oxygen, and just  _kiss_  mph!"  
  
  
Now, he ain't the boss of me, but this is the kinda thing I pride myself on not having to be told once, let alone twice. And soon as he gets over being surprised, he kisses me back. He ain't half bad at it, neither--wild and pushy, though he tastes tame, like tea and synthetic honey.  
  
  
He's panting when I let him up for that oxygen he's so keen on. His eyes are all glazed over, his mouth wet and open. I already wanna kiss him again, but I've got the upper hand at last, and I mean to keep it for a spell.  
  
  
"Wo de ma,” he breathes, blinking up at me, his hands bunched up in my t-shirt. I dunno when or why I put my arms around his waist, but there they are.  
  
  
I clear my throat and let go of him. He doesn't return the favor, and I smirk. “Huh. If I'da known  _that_  was all it took to stupefy you--”  
  
  
“Jayne . . . for once, you were absolutely right . . . this goes a  _lot_  better when our mouths are otherwise occupied," he says in a quiet-like rush. It's the smartest thing he's ever said, far as I'm concerned. So I kiss him again--slower, this time. Put my hands on his waist to guide him bedward, and he presses close and rubs against me like a cat all the way.  
  
  
Not as soon as I'd like, we're naked, and all that confounding pale is stretched out underneath me, hot and damp in a neat, nice-smelling bed.  _Familiar_ -smelling bed. But it's just unnatural and disturbing that me and him spend the rest of the night--when we're not rutting--kissing and touching. And stealing looks at each other like gorramn teenagers.  
  
  
Neither of us talk, though he keeps grinning real idjitty. Idjitty for  _him_ , anyway.  
  
  
Maybe his eyes ain't the color of scummy pond-water after all. Which is befuddling.  
  
  
Just plain, gorramn . . .  _confounding_. . . .


End file.
